What Surprises You?

We moved last week. We thought we had purged—donated, tossed, recycled. We had. But we discovered that we missed a key item in our past life—freezer things.

We have taken many car rides with kids that involve bringing food with us. We have taken food for the day, food for weekend, and food for the week. We have many kinds of freeze-its. Big ones, little ones, the kind I received when I bought food online, you name it, we have it.

Because we had two freezers (upstairs and downstairs), I had no idea how many of these we had. No idea. When we moved in, this is what we discovered.

Two boxes of freeze-its! Is this nuts? Yes.

This surprised me.

It’s the same thing on your projects or in your life. What surprises you might be a good measure.

The question for this week is “what surprises you?” Maybe you don’t have many freeze-its the way we did. (They are gone now.) But, I bet you have something that surprises you.

If you are developing a product, how long does it take to release? If you are in support, how long does it take to escalate? If you plan events, when was the last time a vendor surprised you, and how?

Surprises can be good, but they often aren’t. I’m trying to remember the last time I was happily surprised by something at work. Our move came in under the estimate—that was a happy surprise.

Problem-solving, adaptable leaders can go with the flow. But sometimes, too many surprises knock them for a loop.